Residents in city streets with three COVID-19 positive cases will be tested and put under quarantine, Greater Chennai Corporation has stated as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. The testing will be carried out at residents' houses and shops by a nurse and a lab technician. The health workers will be visiting all streets coming under the hotspot zones with their equipment in an autorickshaw, which had begun on Saturday. Two teams have been deployed for each such street every day, who are entrusted with the task of collecting samples from residents in streets with three coronavirus positive cases.
Speaking to the media, Joint Commissioner of Health, Madhusudhan Reddy said, the Chennai Corporation has taken this step to bring down the spread of the COVID-19 infection, which also enables families and contacts of the positive patients to not undergo any troubles. Carrying out such testing will help detect cases much earlier. All residents in such streets with positive cases have also been told to quarantine themselves as a safety measure considering there is a 15% possibility of every home contact in Chennai already being positive. As of now, 50 more lab technicians have been posted to carry out the task in order to not let the positive patients from infecting others when they go to a testing lab on their own.
Since this past Saturday, around 70 to 100 people were identified and tested around a home in Ambattur which earlier saw a COVID-19 positive case. Likewise, the Zonal Health Officer in the Anna Nagar zone Dr Priyadarshini went on to state that all residents in hotspot streets have been tested since Saturday. This move is being carried out to test them at their doorsteps rather than taking them to testing centres, which can bring down the spread of the infection after which they are told to quarantine themselves
Chennai city recorded 1,117 new coronavirus positive cases on Wednesday taking the district's total to 97,575 cases among which 12,735 are said to be active cases and includes those currently undergoing treatment under home quarantine. The city has shown a remarkable improvement over the past three weeks as the cases have seen a drastic drop.